In March, we announced that all of the Google Web APIs adopted support for OAuth 2.0. It is the recommended authorization mechanism when using Google Web APIs.

Today, we are announcing the OAuth 2.0 Playground, which simplifies experimentation with the OAuth 2.0 protocol and APIs that use the protocol. Trying out some requests in the OAuth 2.0 playground can help you understand how the protocol functions and make life easier when the time comes to use OAuth in your own code.

Selecting the APIs to authorize

With the OAuth 2.0 Playground, you can walk through each step of the OAuth 2.0 flow for server-side web applications: authorizing API scopes (screen shot above), exchanging authorization tokens (screen shot below), refreshing access tokens, and sending authorized requests to API endpoints. At each step, the Playground displays the full HTTP requests and responses.

Exchanging the authorization code for a refresh token and an access token

The OAuth Playground can also use custom OAuth endpoints in order to test non-Google APIs that support OAuth 2.0 draft 10.

OAuth configuration screen

You can click the link button to generate a link to a specific Playground state. This allows quick access to replay specific requests at a later time.

Nicolas Garnier joined Google’s Developer Relations in 2008 and lives in Zurich. He is a Developer Advocate focusing on Google Apps and Web APIs. Before joining Google, Nicolas worked at Airbus and at the French Space Agency where he built web applications for scientific researchers.